The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument and, in particular, it relates to an electronic musical instrument that can be connected to a personal computer and that provides musical tone data.
For some time, electronic musical instruments have been used to transmit or receive performance data that comply with the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard to or from a personal computer (hereinafter “PC”). An electronic musical instrument system in which an electronic musical instrument and a PC are connected with mutual control by a communications format that complies with the MIDI standard is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Number 3460230.
However, the electronic musical instrument system disclosed in that reference is configured such that the system supports MIDI commands for the control of the electronic musical instrument. Accordingly, in order for control to be carried out by the PC, it is necessary for the PC to have installed and execute software capable of controlling the electronic musical instrument. On the other hand, typically software is already installed in the PC that controls reproduction systems for media such as CD (compact disk) or DVD (digital versatile disk) and the like, which reproduces musical tones and images. That kind of software enables not only the reproduction of the media by the PC, but also makes it possible to change the order in which the tunes are arranged, create new media on which only some of the selected tunes are recorded, record to a different media (for example, from a CD to a MiniDisk), or convert and store to a different format (for example, from a CD to a MP3 format).
Accordingly, when a user desires to reproduce a CD, the software that reproduces CDs must be launched. In addition, if the user also desires to control the electronic musical instrument contemporaneously, the software that controls the electronic musical instrument must also be launched. Hence this creates a problem that the operation of the PC becomes more complicated.
Embodiments of the present invention are aimed to solve the problem discussed above and provides an electronic musical instrument with which there is no need for settings that generate the control data unique to the electronic musical instrument in the external devices such as personal computers (PC), hence enabling easier use.